![]() Though THE READER may boast the typical pedigree of a Holocaust film-acclaimed actors, a literary source, and an Oscar-baiting end-of-the-year release date-this drama has a significant difference: it focuses on a perpetrator, rather than the victims.*Photo of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial courtesy Vectrus. ![]() Despite our intransient superego, we delight in our tranquil impotence, we take up permanent residence in a peaceful hell.”įurther Reading: The Temptation of Innocence: Living in the Age of Entitlement by Pascal Bruckner and Guilt about the Past by Bernhard Schlink. Our lazy despair does not incite us to fight injustice but rather to coexist with it. was born “from a collective commitment to regard everything as possible,” whereas Europe “was born out of its weariness with sacrifice.” Still, The Tyranny of Guilt is a landmark exploration of the myopia that comes with Western guilt.Įxcerpt: “On the whole, the Old World prefers guilt to responsibility: the former is easier to bear we get on well with our guilty conscience. Bruckner also makes sweeping generalizations that beg for closer attention – that, for example, the U.S. Bruckner writes, “There is no doubt that Europe has given birth to monsters, but at the same time it has given birth to theories that make it possible to understand and destroy these monsters.” And then again Europe “is a machine both for producing evil and containing it” – a concept he rephrases several more times. cannot continue “trying to do good for people no matter what they want.” Bruckner is optimistic about the power of Euro-American cooperation, feeling that in the past it has yielded “marvelous results.” Bruckner calls for extending such cooperation into this century.Īlthough The Tyranny of Guilt is spellbinding in its practically poetic repetition of key concepts, as political commentary it frequently amounts to argument ad nauseam. He concludes by setting out a task for the early 21st century: “Reconciling Europe with history and the United States with the world.” He suggests Europe must learn that battles are not won by “compromise” and “incantation” alone, and that the U.S. ![]() Bruckner goes on to discuss the “blunders of the disproportionate” focus on Israel, democracy as a religion, and tensions and dependence between the US and Europe. The power of storytelling is undeniable – is a story of guilt and punishment the most responsible way to chronicle our history? Bush to support his argument, and shows how we choose to narrate ourselves. Thomas and forward through Jacques Derrida and President George W. ![]() Roberto Benigni’s Holocaust film “Life is Beautiful”, which shows a sanitized version of Auschwitz, indicates that Europe is like a murderer trying to “erase the evidence of his crime.” Bruckner reaches back to Immanuel Kant and St. He quotes, for example, Jean Baudrillard giving an “utterly religious justification of the vengeance” of the terrorists against the US in 9/11. How can Western nations assess current affairs if the West by default positions itself as sinners begging for punishment?īruckner widens his view from headlines to filmmakers, saints, thinkers, and world leaders, weaving together Western narratives in an eerily effective way. Bruckner’s shows that public discourse in the West is rife with self-hatred and self-blame, which he argues is a threat to clear thinking. Le Parisien’s headline read, “Al-Qaeda Punishes London.” Then-Mayor of London Ken Livingstone’s responded, “The suicide attacks would probably not have happened had Western powers left Arab nations free to decide their own affairs after World War I.” As with the European response to 9/11, which Bruckner summarizes, there was sympathy for the victims, but the attacks themselves – well, we had it coming. Western Democracies are populated, as Bruckner memorably puts it, by “self-flagellants” whose masochistic expressions of guilt border on the “suicidal.” He cites as examples the response to the Jbombings of the London transport system. And in the case of France, Bruckner argues, guilt is also a symptom of the West’s dwindling importance relative to increasingly dynamic “Indian, Chinese, Brazilian, Arab, and Hispanic” cultures. The West wallows more than it repays debts, makes amends, or fully understands its role in the world. Bruckner, a prize-winning French essayist and novelist, tackles the subject mostly from the French or European perspective and says that unending guilt is in fact vain and ineffective. The Tyranny of Guilt examines how the Western guilt complex may in fact be a major hurdle in fighting today’s atrocities. But are we taking this guilt too far? Pascal Bruckner thinks so. The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochismīy Pascal Bruckner (Translated by Steven Rendall)Įach of us in the West may well have a reason to carry around a guilty conscience, considering our history of colonialism, slavery, and genocide.
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